Course · Interpersonal Skills
Across the Table
Negotiate for your client like a professional: prepare, open, trade, hold under pressure and close with the deal in writing.
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Law school teaches you to argue. It rarely teaches you to negotiate: to find what the other side needs, to know your own limit before you sit down, to make and answer an offer, to trade, to stay steady when someone pushes, and to finish with something in writing. This course teaches those skills one at a time, with invented people and figures, practice rooms that answer back, and calculators that show you the numbers behind the instincts.
The Curriculum
What a negotiation really is: positions, interests and the shape of the deal→
Positions and interests, fixed-pie and value-creating deals, and the questions that find what people actually need. Practice: Interest Digger.
Preparing to negotiate: your alternative, your walk-away number and the zone of agreement→
Your alternative (BATNA), your walk-away number, the other side's, and the zone of possible agreement. Practice: ZOPA Finder.
Opening, anchoring and moving: how to make and answer offers→
First offers, the anchoring effect, answering a lowball, and planning concessions that tell the right story. Practice: Concession Planner and a retail lease negotiation.
Making the pie bigger: issues, trades and packages→
Multiple issues, trades, packages and contingent agreements, and why splitting every issue leaves value behind. Practice: Package Builder.
Pressure and hard bargaining: recognising tactics and answering them→
Deadlines, limited authority, good cop and bad cop, nibbling and ultimatums, and how to answer each without losing your temper. Practice: Tactic Sorter and an IP licence negotiation.
Listening, questions and emotion at the table→
Active listening, open and closed questions, naming emotion, apology, and the trust that lets information move. Practice: Style Profile and Say It Better.
Authority, honesty and closing: ending a negotiation well→
Client authority, the line between bluff and falsehood, closing the deal, and writing it down. Practice: Line Between Firm and False.
Capstone: Capstone: preparing and running a full negotiation→
Put it all together: a preparation checklist and a full practice negotiation with trades, pressure and closing.
What It Covers
“You will not be told to be tougher or to be nicer. You will be shown how to be prepared, which is better than both.”
- Seven modules and a capstone that run from preparation to the written close, in the order a real negotiation unfolds.
- Calculators for the parts that are really arithmetic: your walk-away number, the zone of agreement, a concession plan and a multi-issue package.
- Four full practice negotiations (a retail lease, a business sale, an IP licence under pressure and the capstone) with different counterparts whose moods change how each of your moves lands.
- Twelve-question quizzes drawn from a pool, a module-by-module path to a Certificate of Completion, and nothing that depends on one country's law.
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Other Scrolls in This Chamber
Cooling the Room$15 →How conflict escalates, mapping a dispute, de-escalation, hard conversations, choosing a process, mediation, power, culture and ethics, with practice mediations.
The Client Conversation$15 →Trust, the first meeting, fees and scope, updates in plain words, advice and decisions, bad news, boundaries and ethics, with practice meetings.
Steady Under Load$15 →Stress, early signals, in-the-moment tools, workload and boundaries, perfectionism, burnout and recovery, with practice labs and a capstone week.Module 1 is free to try. Sign in, pass each module quiz and the course average, and your Certificate of Completion is emailed to you automatically. This course teaches method and technique with invented people and figures; it is general education, not legal advice, and professional rules differ from country to country.
Common questions
- Is this course only for litigators or only for deal lawyers?
- Neither. Settlement talks, contract terms, employment exits and lease renewals all use the same skills: knowing your interests and your alternative, making and answering offers, trading, and closing. The examples cover both disputes and deals.
- Does it teach the law of a particular country?
- No. It teaches negotiation method. Module 7 discusses professional duties on honesty and authority in general terms and tells you to check the rules that apply to you, since they differ from place to place.
- Do I need any maths?
- Only simple arithmetic. The calculators do the sums and show their working, so you see how a walk-away number or a package score is built.
- Are the practice negotiations scored?
- They give feedback and a debrief at the end, but they are practice. The graded part is the quiz at the end of each module.
- How do I get the Certificate of Completion?
- Sign in, pass each module quiz and keep a course average of at least 75. The certificate is then issued and emailed to you automatically.
- Is any of it legal advice?
- No. The people, companies and figures are invented for teaching, and this is general education, not legal advice.
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